Book surfeit

It's crazy, this never happens. I'm usually cautious about book commitments, because I know how deeply I tend to get embedded into them, so I read one book at a time - I might dip into another, so I know where I'm going next, but right now I'm reading:
  1. M. Wylie Blanchet, The Curve of Time
  2. Jasper Fforde, The Well of Lost Plots
  3. Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons, Watchmen
  4. Craig Thompson, Blankets
  5. Robert J. Wiersema, Before I Wake
Just finishing Wiersema now, at least. What a read that's been!

Comments

Anonymous said…
By coincidence I too am reading Blankets at the moment. Great artwork. I recommend Epileptic by David B if you've not already read it. Similar insofar as it is an autobiographical graphic novel, with great black and white art, actually I think the art is more to my taste in Epileptic.
richard said…
How odd that we've landed on the same graphic novel, since I've only read about four of them in my life! It's a genre I don't know at all well, but I'll be working with a student on ideas of failed utopia in the graphic novel next semester, so I'm building myself a basic framework. Any recommendations along that line?

I'll look for Epileptic.
Anonymous said…
Sounds like an interesting project. As for recommendations I guess it depends on how literally you are planning on interpreting the title. There are no doubt plenty of dystopian graphic novels in the SF genre , a couple that come to mind and are worth reading:

Alan Moore's 'V for Vendetta'

Warren Ellis's 'Transmetropolitan Series'- less literary than Moore but lots of interesting SF ideas with a distinctly political theme throughout.

If you take a slightly broader reading of the title then I guess the following might be of interest:

Marjane Satrapi's 'Persepolis'- about a girl/woman growing up in Iran.

Art Speigleman's 'Maus' - recounting his father's experiences as a Jew in Poland (IIRC) during the Nazi invasion.

If you take a broader interpretation still that encompasses stories about one person's perceived utopia dissolving (so for example 'Blankets' would count). Then the following are worth reading:

Eric Drooker's 'Flood'- A man loses his job and then things go downhill, of interest for its almost entire lack of text.

Osamu Tezuka's 'Ode to Kirihito' - Well to do doctor investigates strange disease and turns into a dog!

Charles Burn's 'Black Hole' - coming of age turns sour in very weird ways.

For something very odd indeed, but which may well not meet your remit, then I recommend 'The Frank Book' by Jim Woodring. A story set in a psychedelic fantasy world inhabited by the protagonist Frank who is a cat, along with lots of other peculiar and disturbed creations. The bright colours make it look all very child-like and happy but on closer inspection there is a lot of sinister happenings.

Hope those are of some help. Would be interested to hear what other ideas you come up with or have already thought about.
richard said…
Bless you, Keith - I've got lots of reading to do before I get to the stage of recommendations. There's the matter of rereading More's Utopia by Tuesday, for one thing....

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